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Saturday, November 24, 2012

Where to get research papers for free

After the post about ebooks, I have thought you may be interested on academic papers too and here I am! :) THANKS for your contributions to this post!

On the subject education, there is also a new post about the free university courses you can attend online, for free!!!

Anyway, if you are a PhD student or a researcher you need to download and study other people's scientific works. For most journals (the most important ones) your institution should have already a subscription.

I will list you several options to address this problem. At least one of them will be suitable for you. I'm 99.9999% sure! ;)

1) Ask to the librarian of your university. He/She knows for sure whom ask the paper you are looking for.

2) Look for the draft version of the published paper.
A good starting point is the Cornell University Library http://arxiv.org/ where many researchers put their papers before they are accepted on some journal.
Very often the authors update the file on arxiv.org even after the acceptance.

3) Search NOT on google.com but on https://scholar.google.com instead.
Insert the reference of your paper (Author(s), journal, volume, page), perform the search and when you find it, click "show all versions".
In this way you can check if the pdf of the paper you are intersted in is available somewhere over the web.

So if sci-hub.org is down, try the mirrors! And if the mirrors are also down... well there are still the other options!
This is the most powerful option, the only one that NEVER fails but it is also completely illegal.
I mean, it simply doesn't look like something legal, but I could be wrong... anyway you are warned!NOTE: Sometimes its servers are down.
This should be temporary and anyway you can still refer to http://libgen.org/scimag/

*** UPDATE #2 on sci-hub from another reader below ***
It works with the Russian proxies, but sometimes you'll
have to keep trying, which means refreshing your browser or trying again
a few minutes later until it works.

*** UPDATE #1 on sci-hub from a reader below *** Sci-hub is not down, actually. It's just restricted to users inside
Russia, which means that you'll be able to access it if you use a Russian proxy. A list of russian proxys:
http://www.proxynova.com/proxy-server-list/country-ru/alternatively you can setup a vpn (for example with Astrill) with access to russian proxies.

15) I almost forgot! Ask a friend who works at a University, better if he/she is Finnish! This is not a joke! Finnish people working at Universities have access to many on-line journals!

16) As pointed by a reader below... Facebook can also be a valuable resource!

To use it you have simply to copy the link of the paper, just the link you find on the official page of the journal. YES, the one that, if clicked, prompt you immediately on the page where you are asked for the login and/or the money!

If you CANNOT access sci-hub in your country, just try to install the Firefox and Chrome add-on proxmate.

Note...
Probably, if your institution doesn't have the subscription for the journal you want, probably that journal (and consequently the paper you are interested in), is not that important in your research field.

Another possibility could be that your library has not so much money and in this case other solutions are (partially) justified...

An important remark If you find this post useful, please consider de-activating your adblocker on this blog and, if interested, have a look at the ads I host. I donate the small income from ads to organizations like UNICEF. Alternatively donate by yourself using at www.unicefusa.org/

This will help make the world a better placeand you will feel less guilty using sci-hub & co.!

libgen.org is made by the same guys who maintain scihub.org. I think Sci-hub is down because they are revamping their servers or something. You can search for and get old papers on libgen, very easily, just be sure to enter the exact title and then click the DOI link to get the paper

Internet is an ocean of opportunities and probably some other service will appear in the future! And anyway, with or without sci-hub.org, there is still so much knowledge available for free over there!

Sci-hub is not down, actually. It's just restricted to users inside Russia, which means that you'll be able to access it if you use a russian proxy. A list of russian proxys: http://www.proxynova.com/proxy-server-list/country-ru/

Well I have tried it in the last few days with a Russian proxy and it is not allowing me to get papers like it used to without the proxy changes. It keeps telling me that I am signed in as:National Chung Hsing University (Institutional account) and whenI click for paper (on journal access site like ingentaconnect) I'm told page not found. This is very unfortunate as I am in writing PhD mode and my college has useless access to papers and I could've really done with this. Free education my ass!CP (sadface)

I don't know if it is still like this, but until several years ago, as researcher in Finland you had access to a lot a resources (i.e. papers) on the internet.The education system in Finland was/is great! Really!

Sci-hub.org will work with russian proxies, indeed. I've just downloaded a paper from Springer using it. I exceptionally got this one in the first try, but sometimes you'll have to keep trying, which means refreshing your browser or trying again a few minutes later until it works. Right now, for example, i'm trying to get a paper from JSTOR and it won't work - that happens. I've noticed that the most "popular" journals are easier to get since, I suppose, most of the university proxies that sci-hub.org uses have subscriptions to those journals.

hey ed. please don't close ur blog. and guys. tiera is worth mentioning.it has loads of books. iam just scared that it wl have same fate of libgen.I take most help from tiera. I will die if tiera goes off.

Ed ,please tell us if there are chances of tiera going down. they hav already banned access to parent directory

Any where i can find INGENTA CONNECT articles..pls help..i couldnt access them in sci hub..any alternative you can suggest..thankyou for this wonerfull blog you are maintaining..really informative and completely usefull...i appreciate your dedicated work.

I just downloade the proxmate add on. And it works like magic.. I almost cried.. when i just downloaded the add on and tried to open the sci-hub, it didnt work. So i almost gave up, but I tried one more time. Gave it some time after I downloaded the add on, and then tried to open the sci-hub. And it worked! The website is all in russian btw

guys lease tell how download these papers http://standards.sae.org/j1713_201411/http://standards.sae.org/j661a_197109/http://standards.sae.org/j661a_196704/http://standards.sae.org/wip/j2923/http://standards.sae.org/j2707_201210/ i tried with sci-hub but its not working